AN INSPIRATION...

FEET2FIRE RADIO

VIS' RADIO SHOWS

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

“The best time to plant a tree is 20
years ago. The second best time is now.”

What a difference a day makes (cue
Dinah Washington). I had a very good day yesterday, mostly because it
involved all kinds of situations, including driving about 200 miles
and it all went down without a glitch. As a reward, last night, I
enjoyed a spinach salad and a wonderful Chianti, followed by some
wonderful reflections, overlaid with passable entertainments. It is a
wonderful thing when your own statements come back upon you as
verifications in the realm of experience. Personally, I seldom talk
about the specifics of my struggles or their level of intensity. What
is intense for one can break another and it is difficult to measure
degrees of impact in any comprehensive or general way because it is
all subjective. In recovery groups they talk about hitting your
bottom and you hear about high and low bottoms. Some of us get more
profoundly hammered (double entendre alert) than others but the one
constant is that we are all affected.

Life affects us and what is less
recognized is that we affect life and what might be even less
recognized is how these two conditions affect each other. I was with
an acquaintance during my travels yesterday and it was a pretty
enjoyable interplay. The next to the last stop was a large commercial
enterprise. It was filled with employees and shoppers and it is one
of the big success stories in the area it operates in. This is
because the man who founded it treats his employees well and provides
a wide selection of high end products that I have never seen the like
of anywhere else and does so at very fair prices that you often don't
see anywhere else. This results in a pretty happy and bustling
environment. I spend a good portion of my time seeking to catch the
opportunities that come to all of us in every life situation and
seizing the moment as it were. The point of all of this is that I
consider myself a good will ambassador for the human race and I would
like to point out that we are all ambassadors, whether we understand
this or not. We all affect the dynamics of life in everything we
think and say and do. So why not do it to the best of what we are
able to? So I took every occasion to interact with people and it went
well.

Since my acquaintance, who is also a
blossoming friend was there, we wound up discussing this and I got a
chance to explain how I see the moments of each day as a chance to
affect life in a positive way. I will be the first to admit that I am
not 100% in this regard and that is because when life impacts on me
in a negative fashion, I am not always able to remain consistent as a
positive force. I would say this happens at the blogs more than it
does in life and I suspect we are all better in person than we are at
a distance. Maybe we feel more secure taking liberties then, or we
are less concerned about reactions. Whatever the reason, it is
something I have noticed. Why I am mentioning this is to share an
awareness of our responsibilities in life and to emphasize how
critical it is for us to remember that we affect life.

One of the things this fellow and I
discussed were public protests and any number of countless reactions
that people and groups of people have to social and cultural
situations that arise; like when corporations do what corporations do
and when governments and government agencies do what they do and when
any one of so many situations come up that pits the interests of the
public against special interests of which there are many. He was
telling me about how he had been involved in some of these things and
how other people that we both know have also been engaged in these
things and... I told him how I am almost never involved in any of
these causes and concerns because the big money and the big
influences always win, even when it looks like they have lost. They
don't give up. They keep coming around from another angle. They
corrupt or frighten whomever they can and sometimes they frame
people. Sometimes they set them up. Sometimes they even kill them.

It isn't out of fear that I eschew. I'm
not afraid of these people but I am afraid of wasting my time in
fruitless and unproductive efforts. Afraid is probably not the right
word. People can get together and cause positive change. I won't
argue against that but I prefer to work from the positive side that
affects the general consciousness of everyone I come into contact
with, rather than to confront the forces that are always coming after
humanity and working contrary to the best interests of us all. My
feeling is that they are in the process of destroying themselves and
I depend on Mr. Apocalypse for the heavy lifting.

Yes, I do go after some of the most
powerful negative influences on the planet and I do it nearly every
day and I do it in print that proliferates across much wider margins
than any street protest but... I always seek to come out of it with a
positive spin. In other words... I think some actions are more
effective than others. I take note of how successful people and
groups of people are in their struggles against the dark forces. I've
watched Monsanto win time and time again, while engaging in all kinds
of illegal and unethical behavior. I have seen them outright bribe
and threaten the decision makers. Meanwhile, I have seen them take it
in the neck with public opinion. I have watched them, like McDonalds
and others, get hit in the wallet. I am watching them go down. All of
this is the work of Mr. Apocalypse.

Perhaps what I am talking about here is
simply differences in technique and I have no inclination to
criticize people who have an approach different than mine. I simply
think that changing yourself and working to shine your love and
attention on others is far more productive than what is otherwise
done. I think an informed and aware public is much more successful at
everything than an ignorant, angry and confused public. I think
internal change is far more productive at causing external change
than are external efforts in times of opposition and conflict.

I also like to pick my causes. I am not
motivated to protest on behalf of things like Hawaiian Sovereignty.
Of course I support it but I am not Hawaiian so I do it invisibly. I
consider cellphone using and texting drivers to be a major concern. I
consider stupidity an even bigger concern and the other comes out of
it. All kinds of bad things come out of stupid and greedy and
selfish. If these were fixed then none of the other things that
people protest against or dislike would even be happening. Fix
stupidity and you fix everything else. However, there is no cure for
stupid or... is there? I've looked into music and prayer and plants.
There is a science at work there, or a system, or a law; call it what
you will and I have looked into all kinds of similar things. I have
looked at how a smile can be like the sun shining and I have seen
what the sun can do. I read that old story about a bet between the
sun and the wind as to which of them could make a traveler remove his
cloak.

I believe in things that aren't
generally in practice and I have noticed what successful people do
and what unsuccessful people do and how these things work to cause
the results that they do, regardless of whether the people are to be
defined as good or bad people and that is all based on what anyone
considers good and bad. They vary widely. Sometimes good is what gets
you what you want and sometimes good is getting what you want but not
at the expense of others. I think you can raise the consciousness of
others around you and at a distance simply by raising your own and I
believe you can make people better if you make yourself better. I
believe that we are like planets of influence in a solar system of
existence and I believe there is an interpenetrating awareness that
commands it all and the more you come into line with that awareness,
the more you reflect its will in everything you do.

I am not 100% at all of this and maybe
not at any of it but I am trying to be. I am not focusing on mistakes
I made getting here, or hearts I have broken or those who have broken
my heart. I consider that a broken heart can be a good thing because
those are the places where the love can leak out; the places where it
is broken. I believe if life has broken you in many places and you
are put back together by understanding and that whatever got you
broken has manifested some degree of wisdom then you become like a
piece of art that is done in a way that it works with light the way
Rembrandt did, or a stained glass window.

I do not approve of Monsanto or our
government and its branches and the way it goes about its business
here and abroad. I don't approve of the way the marketplace behaves
and many another thing but I pick my battles and I believe that
everything I do not care much for comes out of ignorance; greed,
overweening ambition and other similar things and that all of these,
the named and unnamed, come out of bad character development, which
are all the offspring of bad parenting, whether that involved a
mother and or father, or a government, or religion, or educational
system or whatever acts as a parental force at any particular point
and we are all parents of the moments that follow the moment we are
in; regardless of whether that whole concept is an illusion given
that the sense of time is an artificial construct.

This is in no way a criticism of others
and their preferences toward thought and speech and action. This is a
critique of myself and people like me and as Lao Tzu said;

Be utterly humble

And you shall hold to the foundation of
peace.

Be at one with all these living
things which, having arisen and flourished,

Return to the quiet whence they
came,

Like a healthy growth of vegetation

Falling back upon the root.

Acceptance of this return to the
root has been called 'quietism,'

Acceptance of quietism has been
condemned as 'fatalism.'

But fatalism is acceptance of
destiny

And to accept destiny is to face
life with open eyes,

Whereas not to accept destiny is to
face death blindfold.

He who is open-eyed is open-minded-

He who is open-minded is open-hearted,

He who is open-hearted is kingly,

He who is kingly is godly,

He who is godly is useful,

He who is useful is infinite,

He who is infinite is immune,

He who is immune is immortal.

So it can seem that one is not socially
committed enough. It can seem that one is indifferent in many ways
that are not the normal way. It can seem that one does not care when
one deeply cares and that one lacks something that they have an
abundance of but are not showy about. All kinds of things can seem to
be and not be because of the way people project on to others the
deficiencies that exist within themselves, the way that a thief sees
everyone else as a thief and so on and so on and so on. Insert
whatever type you wish in place of the thief. I hate that I am such a
slow learner but I am trying.